Gaming Tests: GTA 5

The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA to help optimize the title. At this point GTA V is super old, but still super useful as a benchmark – it is a complicated test with many features that modern titles today still struggle with. With rumors of a GTA 6 on the horizon, I hope Rockstar make that benchmark as easy to use as this one is.

GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.

We are using the following settings:

  • 720p Low, 1440p Low, 4K Low, 1080p Max

The in-game benchmark consists of five scenarios: four short panning shots with varying lighting and weather effects, and a fifth action sequence that lasts around 90 seconds. We use only the final part of the benchmark, which combines a flight scene in a jet followed by an inner city drive-by through several intersections followed by ramming a tanker that explodes, causing other cars to explode as well. This is a mix of distance rendering followed by a detailed near-rendering action sequence, and the title thankfully spits out frame time data. The benchmark can also be called from the command line, making it very easy to use.

There is one funny caveat with GTA. If the CPU is too slow, or has too few cores, the benchmark loads, but it doesn’t have enough time to put items in the correct position. As a result, for example when running our single core Sandy Bridge system, the jet ends up stuck at the middle of an intersection causing a traffic jam. Unfortunately this means the benchmark never ends, but still amusing.

AnandTech Low Resolution
Low Quality
Medium Resolution
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High Resolution
Low Quality
Medium Resolution
Max Quality
Average FPS
95th Percentile

All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.

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  • zodiacfml - Friday, November 6, 2020 - link

    whut?! They were late buying the EUV equipment to save money, too much focus on profitability which will kill Intel slowly overtime.
  • PandaBear - Friday, November 6, 2020 - link

    Yup, TSMC bought about 50% of all ASML output for the next couple years while Intel only bought 5%. RIP Intel, you got what you deserve and you are going to be the next Motorola.
  • Threska - Monday, November 16, 2020 - link

    Like it says in the article AMD almost folded in 2015, and people were writing articles about it's demise. Seems no one has learned anything about predicting the future from that experience. The world needs competition. It doesn't need an AMD monopoly, nor an Intel one, and with good fortune RISC-V and maybe other competitors will come on the scene so we don't keep repeating the history of "Oh they're dying, and I'm rooting for it".
  • Spunjji - Sunday, November 8, 2020 - link

    Keep on wishing, friend
  • Jasonovich - Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - link

    Hardly likely, TSMC is the bigger fish, has almost twice the capita as Intel.
  • vais - Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - link

    Luckily there are anti-monopoly laws ;)
  • Threska - Monday, November 16, 2020 - link

    Let's see how the whole ARM acquisition by Nvidia shakes out before we all start quoting monopoly laws.
  • Kurosaki - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    RIP Anandtech, these reviews makes it hard to come in without error 504 or the site c crashing
  • catavalon21 - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    No issues here. Site's working fine.
  • ballsystemlord - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link

    Same here.

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